1. Hello!
TORTURE THRONE is a new French Death metal band that’s currently
totally unknown, so a little introduction to the band, its past
misdeeds and macabre motivations would be good…

HAILZ G.!!
So here is a little introduction: TORTURE THRONE, it’s a traditional
Death metal band from Le Havre, it was created in 2009 and we are
4 individuals: Guillaume (bass Vox) / Damien (lead guitar lead)
/ Xavier (rhythm guitar) and myself, Fabrice, behind the drums.
The history of TORTURE THRONE begins after my departure from
TALES OF BLOOD (Death Metal Paris) for geographical reasons. It
appeared as impossible for me not to begin another Death metal band
in Normandy. I met Damien, who’s also an old school Death fan, and
the project was born. Then Guillaume (Also an ex Tales of Blood)
quickly joined us for bass guitar and vocals. Xavier, who was the
last to join, reinforced the rhythmical section. Our idea was
immediately to try and make TORTURE THRONE sound « in the Swedish
way », in the purest tradition of the Sunlight studio and Tomas
Skogsberg epoch. The four of us are big fans of end 80’s Death
metal (Yes, we are old farts!!)… We knew the beginnings of the style
in France and in Europe… So, from there comes our will and motivation
to produce traditional Death metal!!!

2. Your
band name, Torture Throne, reminds me a lot the Americans of INCANTATION,
with a black metal touch… Is this feeling of a similar sonority
volunteer, in a way it would be a kind of homage, or are the reasons
hiding behind these words different ?

We always liked
quite extreme band names and your reference to INCANTATION is right…
« Mortal Throne of Nazarene » is one of our fave Death metal albums!!!We
are also big fans of Darkthrone and the first Black metal wave.We
needed a name to fit our music: Traditional/ extreme, with an occult
connotation… It’s the way the TORTURE THRONE concept was born. At
the level of the meaning, TORTURE THRONE directly evokes the sacralisation
(The throne!!) of a violent act such as torture, the whole in a
« religious » context !!!Somewhere you were right : Concerning
the name, we can both speak about an homage, a will and a « concept
».

3. At the
level of your influences, one can feel Swedish Death metal bands
of the 90’s such as the old DISMEMBER, GRAVE, a bit of ASPHYX ("Last
one on earth"), as well as some German bands who were deeply
in the Swedish Death revival few years ago, but sometimes I also
hear a bit of old Finnish Death, or a bit of INCANTATION… So tell
us a bit more about the key records that strongly branded the music
of TORTURE THRONE, the influences you claim as well as those to
be less obvious…

Ah Ah Ah!!
Well I see our influences transpire through the Ep. So, in fact
we are mainly influenced by the Swedish scene of the 90’s
(Entombed / Grave / Dismember / Nirvana 2002 / first Tiamat etc),
the old occult bands (Grotesque, Crucifier, Imprecation), the Finnish
scene (Vorum, Maveth) and obviously the evil « American » scene
(Incantation, Sadistic Intent and more).However, we mostly worship
this Swedish scene from the 90’s: We come from Normandy, and for
this reason we feel close to the Scandinavian scene: Men from the
north created Normandy and our culture sweats quite strongly of
a Viking inheritance: The names of our towns, our flag (The cross
of Saint Olaff) is the same. We wanted to underline these kind of
roots up to the color of our music.What pleases me in the «
real » Death metal are the atmosphere, the ability of bands to play
a blast, to then Insert monstrously slow parts, and to follow on
a catchy mid-tempo…Something that takes your guts and makes
you feel the Death metal. We couldn’t play anything else than a
music taking you back to the source of Death metal itself, and to
some extent to Black metal.This unhealthy, quite filthy aspect
that gave a so obscure atmosphere… Unfortunately most of nowadays’
bands forget it…

4. I find
your music doesn’t sound very French… French bands quite often have
gimmicks, or ways of composing, that can sound like « Old brutal
death » for example (I will quote only this one, because it’s not
necessarily clearly definable), but it’s not your case : Your demo
could have been recorded by Germans of even squarely Swedish guys
(But I would maybe choose the Germans, for a bit more conservative,
tight and « massive » approach). Was it a conscious choice
to eradicate any influence from your home country? (Camembert metal,
it’s not too good?). When you compose Death metal, is the inspiration
coming from everyday’s life, or are the sources deeper and more
obscure ? Speaking about it, what’s your opinion about Death metal
in France right now… Are there bands to please your tastes or are
you rather uninterested?

Well one more
time, our goal is to sound as Swedish as possible… And especially
not Brutal death (Even if there are good bands, and even some to
mix the Swedish and brutal genres!!!)… We really like Death metal
with atmospheres…Then our inspiration to compose Death metal
often comes from an idea of riff, of arrangement, or from a mood
to be transcribed from the lyrics. Concerning the concept, we wanted
to deal with this obscure and almost occult part of the old testament,
with violence, cruelty and the spiritual dimension of these acts.
We are all passionate with spiritual and occult literature.
In our first Ep « Thy Serpent’s Cult », we examined the attraction
of human being for violence, perversion, this tendency is the revealer
of a divine failure. And for this matter, to read the bible is interesting:
Up from the Decalogue, when the Devil (Incarnated as a serpent)
tempts the human being, he doesn’t hesitate to disobey his creator.
The whole old Testament testifies of these war tales, of this
attraction for violence, which are the nature itself of our species.
The strongest failure of god was revealed in the telling of Noë;
God will be forced to destruct humanity to try and rebuild it on
new basis: Pure failure and act of total nihilism !Concerning
the French scene, we feel a bit out of step… Finally there are very
few classical, evil and filthy Death metal bands… The French syndrome
is to absolutely want originality: Melodic death, Death core, progressive
death etc etc, all the more in the lyrics, in the concepts: For
example, today for most of « metal » fans, French Death metal sums
up to… Gojira. Some guys who doesn’t look metal at all anymore,
who use dolphins on their covers and with a music that goes all
over the place… We do not recognize ourselves into that at all,
and today we prefer to listen to the last ones that respect Death
metal : Necros, Necrowretch, Affliction Gates, Herpes, Coffin Terror
etc etc.

5. Your
guitar sound is very close to the old Swedish one… Which hardware
do you use? Is a Boss pedal enough, or did you need a little something
more, something like an IPHONE plugged between the guitar and the
amp, with the « Skogsberg Emulator V2 » App at full regime ? AhAh.

We worked on
the sound in Cubase (Damien masters this tool quite well) inspiring
ourselves from the olds: JCM 800 emulator and Boss Heavy metal emulator
all the way!!! During rehearsals Damien works on Pod Xlive and Xavier
uses an Hypermetal Boss pedal… We still need to improve the sound…
But during rehearsals it tastes as if we were in the 90’s in a little
filthy place from Le Havre!!!

6. While
your line up counts a drummer, the drum parts from your demo sounds
like a machine… Did you use a drum-machine for reasons of recording
facilities, maybe your drummer was too drunk, or there weren’t enough
microphones to record everything?

Laughs… It’s
a bit of all this… In fact we did drum takes at home with few microphones…
It was edited in Cubase. We wanted a very tight rhythm section to
have a real effect of power. For the future album, we should anyway
record the drum parts in a studio to recover a totally authentic
sound !!

7. The cover
of this demo contains no illustration, only the logo and the title…
Was it a choice of sobriety? For the next recording, if you had
the funds which kind of graphism and universe could we see and which
illustrator would you choose? You can answer this question two times:
First taking your funds in account, second imagining you would have
no financial limits ;-)

The choice
of sobriety is deliberate so that it even more fits the concept.
It’s also a reference to the tape demos, with xeroxed covers, we
could see when we were teenagers (Aaaah, tape trading!!!)… Then
there are details from the past we always liked: No photos on the
second demo of «Mutilated » or on the first Cannibal Corpse album
for example…Then, concerning the graphical universe we are big
fans of Chris « Moyen », of black and white covers… I think we’ll
choose something in this genre… And if we had no financial limits,
let’s go crazy, we would choose Chris « Moyen » or Dansea Grave
for a cover à la Entombed / Dismember / Carnage!!!!

8. Your
demo was released on OLD DEATH IS REAL Records. Can you tell us
a bit more about this enterprise of cadaver traffic? If I got it
well, it’s your own label…

Basically,
ODIR (Old Death Is Real !!) is in fact our association… We begin
with the help of a few passionate guys who choose to make it a real
underground label, in the worthy meaning of the word. We have as
a project to release and distribute small bands, and maybe to organize
true Death metal/ black metal gigs in Normandy, without too big
claims… We are really conscious Death metal isn’t fashionable compared
to –core.Torture Throne is the first « signing » of the label,
two other bands will follow very soon, and a French old school Death
compilation should come out beginning 2012.

9. We will
now have a closer look at your lyrics… What does it deal with? Is
it rather based on a kind of obscure spiritual? Can you develop
a bit the idea of the cult of the serpent? It doesn’t evoke very
precise things in my mind (Expect from remembrances of the first
CONAN THE BARBARIAN movie where statues of serpents were quite cool!
But I don’t think there’s a link)

Our lyrics
essentially deal with occultism… Wide subject… For the Ep, our texts
speak about the really black side of the human being that always
takes over any desire to obey and respect « It’s creator »… As we
explained before, the cult of the serpent refers to the serpent’s
symbol in the old testament. For some theologians it would be the
incarnation of evil, or even Satan himself. It also refers to many
pagan myths that glorified some animal species, and so rejected
God… Nothing to do with Conan the Barbarian !!

10. As old
school Death metal comes back, more and more ancient sounding albums
are released… What are your favorite records released in 2010 and
2011? Maybe you can also speak about your favorite demos that came
out recently?

11. Do you
listen to other kinds of music apart from metal ? Do you think it
could influence yourselves, a good are less good way, when composing
your own songs?

We listen to
quite a lot of classical music, some contemporary (Celsi Bartok
Schnittke etc) and some Dbeat Crust (And other Kangpunk!! It remains
Swedish brutal stuffs!!!)The atmospheres of contemporary music
are without any doubt something to influence us an unconscious way…
And we are sensible to some ambient/ folk ban

12. What
could we find at the foot of the torture throne?

ds!!! Always
music with a lot of atmospheres!!!

Death, desolation,
lie and hypocrisy. All that makes man a deeply nasty being!!! But
especially some big crushing DEATH METALLLLLLL!!

13. Tell
us more about your forthcoming projects, and all the reader needs
to know before reading your last words…

As said before,
we will release a French « true » Death metal compilation with ODIR,
it will be downloadable for free… If bands recognize themselves
in the speech, they should contact us… Spots are still available!!!
We have the agreement of quite some very cool French bands and there
will be an unreleased Torture Throne song inside. Concerning
gigs, the idea of playing in front of metallers who are thirsty
for filthy Death metal makes us feel very enthusiastic and we will
begin playing live at the end of 2011. For now, we carefully prepare
our set: For the technical level and for the atmosphere we want
to develop during gigs!Then our goal will be to keep on composing
to be able to release a full-length CD at the end of 2012/ beginning
2013, and to keep on preaching the virtues of true Death metal!!
And to conclude, our thanks go to the « old ones » who support
true underground Death metal since so many years, a big thank to
the youngers who understand or will understand Death metal is black,
dirty, vicious, occult… And especially to you G., for the work
and the interview !!! Horns Up.DEAD DECEASED BUT LIFE GOES ON
!!!